Guild Wars 2

Greetings fellow necromancers. I had an idea to lay out our traits the other night and then assign them grades according to their usefulness. Some of our traits are basically givens or necessary for most builds; some are specific to certain builds; and some, well, some are… well, worthless. What I would like, is an honest, straightforward, realistic discussion about our traits. Obviously, I will give you my opinion, and you can tear it apart, shark style. I grade these scales taking into consideration their level (i.e. adept vs. grandmaster), their usefulness, and to some degree in comparrison with other classes. Ok, so without further ado, here are our Death Magic Traits.

Note: First of all, I think I go into DM for 2 reasons. One, to give staff the needed boost. Depending on staff without DM 2 and 5 is just ineffective. The other reason you go into DM is for the toughness, which becomes needed with certain builds. Last, I guess you can go into DM for the minion traits, which I have to be honest and say I rarely run, unless Im in tpvp and irrritated at the amount of thieves.

Death Magic Minor Traits:
Adept – Reanimator: Summon a jagged horror whenever you kill a foe. 30 second cooldown. ABSOLUTE F! Ok, I am sorry, I tried to give it its due, but it kitten es me off more than does anything else. Jesus, KILL THIS kitten TRAIT. It keeps me in combat when I don’t want to be, it bleeds red letters on my screen, it does 0 damage, and now lasts longer. This is what I call a punt yapper dog. Punt as in I want to punt it through for a touchdown. F grade SOLID.

Master: Protection of the Horde – Gain +20 toughness for each minion under your control. Ok, so, I am level 80, and I am running 4-5 minions, I get 80-100 toughness. Too specific to minion builds that are rarely run. I will leave it up to BAS or other minion runners to comment. I find this essentially useless unless im in tpvp beating up thieves. Grade = D.

Grandmaster – Deadly Strength: 5% of toughness is given as a bonus to power. Ok, this is a decent trait, and I have debated going 25 in DM, and 25 in Curses to get the additional damage. I think they are about the same but i like 50 more toughness vice 50 more percision/condition damage. Grade = A.

Major Death Magic Traits:
Adept – Dark Armor: Gain 400 toughness while channeling. Good trait, have I ever chosen it? Not likely. This is useful for dagger 2 and axe 2, thus perhaps it is decent. That said, it is not damage that ruins my axe 2/dagger 2 channel, its the kitten lack of stability and stun/cc. I don’t get killed while channeling, i get CC’d and my channel gets canceled. Thus, i give this a grade of C. Don’t need 400 armor if i get stunned, the channel gets canceled and I wind up on my backside, 400 additional armor or not.

Adept – Greater Marks: Increases area of marks and marks become unblockable. See above. This is an A grade, as it is essential for any and all staff builds. Though in my opinion, unblockable should mean, you cannot dodge through them. That kitten es me off. Still, grade = A.

Adept – Minion Master : Minion skills recharge 20% faster. Minion build specific. It is just too specific. That said, Minions with the current AI are ONLY effective because of their skills. I give it a B to B+ though minions are frustating to me. Guarantee though, if they fix minion AI, this will get more used.

Adept – Ritual of Protection: Wells apply protection for 3 seconds when cast. I have used this at times, or with specific builds. I like it with the juggermancer build, because it just gives you some added protection. That said, most wells are on such long cooldowns that kitten , if this just does not become that usefull, especially if your well boming. That said, I like it, as one of the few boons we can actually get ahold of. I give it a B.

Adept – Staff Mastery: Staff skills recharge 20% faster. Nice to have with staff builds, though not as much as the Greater Marks Skill. I like having them off cooldowns more, but I find that I bounce into staff, slam down all marks and get back to my other weapon as fast as possible because the staff 1 skill is junk. That said, I find the extra staff 2 skill refreshing before I weapon swap helpful in condition builds. More bleeds please. Thus I give this a B+/A-.

Adept – Shrouded Removal: Lose a condition when you enter death shroud. Hmm. does this compete at all? Maybe if I am running into DM for the toughness and left my staff in the bag then I might select this. Not often. Thus I give it a grade of a B-. One condition on DS is nice every 10 seconds, and can be clutch. Just not sure which build takes it.

Master – Spiteful Vigor: Gain retaliation for 5 seconds when you heal. Interesting trait, though I have to be honest and say I have NEVER chosen it. I have little to say. 5 secs of retaliation could be good, but not when compared to the other traits. I give it a C.

Master – Reaper’s Protection: When disabled (by stun, daze, knockback, knockdown, sink, float, fear, or launch), nearby foes fear you. [sic] This effect can only trigger once every 90 seconds. I like this trait because it is what? what for it….. OUR ONLY AOE FEAR besides sta kitten . Yes, so when you get CC’d, you AOE fear people. Combine that with Master of Terror and you have a win situation, or at least a null situation in which you counter the CC. I love this trait actually and I give it a solid A.

Master – Death Shiver: Apply vulnerability for 10 seconds every 3 seconds to nearby enemies while in Death Shroud. Hmm, I have rarely selected this, though I do see its usefulness. However, I repeat, i have rarely chosen this because it just is a waste considering other skills we have. It gets left in the dust and receives a solid C.

Master – Flesh of the Master: Minions have 50% more health. If I run minions, this is a solid A as it is a necessity. Our minions are so friggen weak as it is, and AOE prone that this might tip the scales… sometimes…. well, rarely. HOwever, it is enough to get a good grade of B. It is just so specific and kitten es me off more when my minions stay alive longer only to sit around and send text messages to their girlfriends when im godkitten getting beat on by a 2000 lb norn warrior. Thanks minion AI.

OK, now we are at the DM gm traits. These are traits I have rarely taken because what? they BOTH DEPEND ON MINIONS! YAY, and what has Gryph said before about minions kids? Minions will be good when they work, but kitten ol gryph off when they stand there. Thus If i ever run minions, I will likely run one of these. which one? Well continue reading.

Grandmaster - Death Nova : Whenever a minion dies, it explodes in a cloud of poison that lasts for 3 seconds. Ok, explodes in a cloud of poison 10 feet away from any enemy and stays there. This is crap. I think it is total crap and poison just is not that effective in my opinion. I give this a D, for a grandmaster trait and I think it is a D- really, because I can’t stand minions (for one), and I think we needed something more punching for a gm trait. too minion specific.

Grandmaster – Necromatic Corruption: Minions have a 10% chance to remove a boon when they attack. This, I find helpful, if….. i run a minion build. This is the trait, between the two, that I would choose. I guess death magic refers to summoning minions from the short bus of necromancy. That said, if minions do attack, and you’re running 4-5 of them, then this could come in handy.

All in all, our DM trait line helps with 2 things, staff skills, and minions. Given that minions are kitten right now (in my opinion) it comes down to staff, and reapers protection. I am appalled that our grandmaster traits in this line are both minion specific. Not happy there, at all.

First of all, nice lists.

I’ve commented on Protection of the Horde in a different thread already:
If Reanimator is an F, then PotH is an F for Minionmancers and an E or G for everyone else.

Also, imo Reaper’s Protection would only deserve an A if you had more control over when it triggers and/or the cooldown was cut in half.

I must be the only necro that actually likes Reanimator. Fast enough to get in and land a hit or two, durable enough to soak a couple of skills, and I’m a male charr so I don’t get annoyed by dumb lines when it dies. Also lives long enough to get between fights in most cases (save WvW where most minions are useless).

Plus, the minion AI is VERY predictable and easy to control. Bhawb and Bas did a very thorough overview of how their AI works. Since I watched their video, I’ve never had issues with minions standing around (Flesh Golem being the only exception, but I can force him into the fray anyhow).

And for the last time: Reanimator DOES NOT KEEP YOU IN COMBAT. This was fixed literally months ago!

Reanimator has the potential to be a good trait, but I don’t think they could ever balance it to be so. The problem right now, is thakittens bad right now. Yes on a rare occasion an MM can make use of it because of the traits, but its uncommon. Why is it hard to balance? What if you lowered the CD, now MMs have fodder for condition removal/death novas, a little condition output (its going to cover other conditions often enough); same problem for any kinds of buffs (which are even worse since MM’s buff base stats). This trait will forever remain too weak because of the threat of the MM trait combination.

Protection of the horde needs to go as well, for similar reasons. If it is buffed to be useful on non-minion builds, it will become OP for minion builds. Remove it, and give some other stat buff.

Otherwise, I’d only say that a lot of these were too opinionated to really be paid attention to as an actual rating and more an opinion of it (not bad, just something to note). Edit: I noticed you said it was all opinions in another one, so obviously if you don’t like minions you aren’t going to like the traits.

It’s not that I don’t like minions, I don’t like the AI. They just don’t seem to work. Another thing is that I don’t like traits we are forced to take be focused for a specific build. I.e. minion focused minor traits.

Of course these are my opinions because I cannot take a fully objective look at it, as it is based on my personal experience. I find some of these traits useless and some useful. I also find that I take some traits over others practically all the time.

I completely agree that minor traits that don’t benefit all builds at least a little are bad and need to go, and frankly because of the existence of so many minion traits I think they just need to axe the traits overall and give us better ones (especially to help resolve some of our PvP issues).

While I think you’re seriously undervaluing Death Nova (Look at what it turns bone minions into, if nothing else) what I’m taking away most from this thread is: Death Magic major traits are generally pretty good, but the minors really mess up the line if you’re not running minions.

Both the Grandmasters being about minions doesn’t bug me as much, since if you want the stats that Death Magic grants, you’ve got most of them by the time you get to the Grandmaster level. As is, you’re forced to get a couple traits that are probably useless to you if you want boon duration.